This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-050957, filed Feb. 28, 2000, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to a technique of detecting a character writing area in an existing document to be scanned by an optical character reader or an optical character recognize (hereinafter called xe2x80x9cOCRxe2x80x9d) and setting a format in the target existing document.
Recently, there increasing needs for reading characters written on existing documents by means of an OCR.
To scan an existing document which is not exclusively designed to be read by an OCR, it is necessary to previously register format control data (FC data) in that OCR as the format for that document. This FC data is registered by registering positional information (coordinate data of a character writing area (which is enclosed by ruled lines) on the document and attributes, such as the type and font of characters to be written in that area, and whether they are handwritten written or typed. Writing in this specification includes both hand-writing of characters and printing of characters by a printer or the like.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 10-40312 discloses a technique of acquiring an unfilled document image by taking a logical product of a plurality of written document images respectively having different characters written thereon.
This technique could not however detect a character writing area set on a document. Neither could it detect the character type which is one of the attributes of characters to be written in the detected character writing area.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus and method of detecting a character writing area in an existing document, a recording medium and a document format producing apparatus.
To achieve the above object, according to one aspect of this invention, there is provided an apparatus for detecting a character writing area in a document, which comprises image input means for inputting a plurality of images of written documents respectively having different characters recorded thereon to a document previously provided with ruled lines and a character writing area where characters are to be recorded; image processing means for producing a common image common to the plurality of images and a differential image acquired by performing a logical sum of mutually different images in the plurality of images, based on the plurality of images input by the image input means; and character-writing-area detection means for detecting the character writing area based on the common image and the differential image produced by the image processing means.
This structure can allow a character writing area in an existing document to be detected.
According to another aspect of this invention, there is provided a document format producing apparatus which comprises image input means for inputting a plurality of images of written documents respectively having different characters recorded thereon to a document provided with ruled lines and a character writing area where characters are to be recorded; image processing means for producing a common image common to the plurality of images and a differential image acquired by performing a logical sum of mutually different images in the plurality of images, based on the plurality of images input by the image input means; character-writing-area detection means for detecting the character writing area based on the common image and the differential image produced by the image processing means; attribute setting means for setting attributes for the detected character writing area based on the common image and the differential image produced by the image processing means; and format setting means for setting positional information of the detected character writing area and the set attributes as format control information of the written documents in association with each other.
This structure can permit a document format to be set for an existing document.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out hereinafter.